Is culture brokered like stocks, real estate, or marriage? In this engaging book, Richard Kurin shows that cultures are also mediated and indeed brokered by countries, organizations, communities, and individuals -- all with their own vision of the truth and varying abilities to impose it on others. Drawing on his diverse experiences in producing exhibitions and public programs, Kurin challenges culture brokers -- defined broadly to include museum professionals, film-makers, journalists, festival producers, and scholars of many disciplines -- to reveal more clearly the nature of their interpretations, to envision the ways in which their messages can "play" to different audiences, and to better understand the relationship between knowledge, art, politics, and entertainment. The book documents a variety of cases in which the Smithsonian has brokered culture for the American public: a planned exhibit on Jerusalem had to balance both Israeli and Palestinian agendas; debates over the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival presented differing visions of the American South; and the National Air and Space Museum's controversial display of the Enola Gay prompted the Smithsonian to re-examine the role of national museums. Arguing that cultural exhibits reflect a series of decisions about representing someone, someplace, and something, Reflections of a Culture Broker discusses the ethical and technical problems faced by not only those who practice in a museum setting but also anyone charged with representing culture in a public forum.

Cultural Democracy explores the crisis of our national cultural vitality, as access to the arts becomes increasingly mediated by a handful of corporations and the narrow tastes of wealthy elites. Graves offers the concept of cultural democracy as corrective--an idea with important historic and contemporary validation, and an alternative pathway toward ethical cultural development that is part of a global shift in values. Drawing upon a range of scholarship and illustrative anecdotes from his own experiences with cultural programs in ethnically diverse communities, Graves explains in convincing detail the dynamics of how traditional and grassroots cultures may survive and thrive--or not--and what we can do to provide them opportunities equal to those of mainstream, Eurocentric culture.

Cultural boundaries exist wherever cultures encounter one another. During centuries of contact between native peoples and others in America, countless intermediaries–artists, students, traders, interpreters, political figures, authors, even performers–have bridged the divide. Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker provides a new understanding of the role of these mediation in North America from 1690 to the present. Cultural brokers have shared certain qualities–in particular a thorough understanding of two of more cultures. Living on the edge of change and conflict, they have responded to evolving and unstable circumstances or alliances with a flexibility born of their determination to bring understanding to disparate peoples. No composite portrait can encompass the complexity of the brokerage experience. To convey the many roles of these intermediaries, editor Margaret Connell Szasz has brought together fourteen distinct portraits, crafted by prominent scholars of Indian-white relations, of brokers across the continent and throughout three centuries of American history–in the colonial world, during the expansion of the republic, in the Wild West, and in the twentieth century. This fascinating and inspiring collection speaks eloquently of life on the cultural frontier. Key figures in our pluralistic heritage, cultural brokers are no less important today, as society continues to struggle with diversity.

This book approaches Australo-German relations from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives. It maps new pathways into the rich landscape of the Australo-German transnational encounter, which is characterized by dense and interwoven cultural, historical and political terrains. Surveying an astonishingly wide range of sites from literary translations to film festivals, Aboriginal art to education systems, the contributions offer a uniquely expansive dossier on the migrations of people, ideas, technologies, money and culture between the two countries. The links between Australia and Germany are explored from a variety of new, interdisciplinary perspectives, and situated within key debates in literary and cultural studies, critical theory, politics, linguistics and transnational studies. The book gathers unique contributions that span the areas of migra tion, aboriginality, popular culture, music, media and institutional structures to create a dynamic portrait of the exchanges between these two nations over time. Australo-German relations have emerged from intersecting histories of colonialism, migration, communication, tourism and socio-cultural representation into the dramatically changed twenty-first century, where traditional channels of connection between nations in the Western hemisphere have come undone, but new channels ensure cross-fertilization between newly constituted borders.

An unprecedented number of folklorists are addressing issues of class, race, gender, and sexuality in academic and public spaces in the US, raising the question: How can folklorists contribute to these contemporary political affairs? Since the nature of folkloristics transcends binaries, can it help others develop critical personal narratives? Advancing Folkloristics covers topics such as queer, feminist, and postcolonial scholarship in folkloristics. Contributors investigate how to apply folkloristic approaches in nonfolklore classrooms, how to maintain a folklorist identity without a "folklorist" job title, and how to use folkloristic knowledge to interact with others outside of the discipline. The chapters, which range from theoretical reorientations to personal experiences of folklore work, all demonstrate the kinds of work folklorists are well-suited to and promote the areas in which folkloristics is poised to expand and excel. Advancing Folkloristics presents a clear picture of folklore studies today and articulates how it must adapt in the future.

Case studies examining the individual’s role in how traditional Chinese performing arts like music and dance are represented, maintained, and cultivated. Faces of Tradition in Chinese Performing Arts examines the key role of the individual in the development of traditional Chinese performing arts such as music and dance. These artists and their artistic works—the “faces of tradition” —come to represent and reconfigure broader fields of cultural production in China today. The contributors to this volume explore the ways in which performances and recordings, including singing competitions, textual anthologies, ethnographic videos, and CD albums, serve as discursive spaces where individuals engage with and redefine larger traditions and themselves. By focusing on the performance, scholarship, collection, and teaching of instrumental music, folksong, and classical dance from a variety of disciplines—these case studies highlight the importance of the individual in determining how traditions have been and are represented, maintained, and cultivated. “Faces of Tradition in Chinese Performing Arts [examines] the dynamic relationship between individual representatives of tradition and the evolution of the traditions themselves.” —A. C. Shahriari, Kent State University, Choice

Essays on the restoration and revival of Jewish sites in post-Holocaust, post-Communist Poland: “Highly recommended.” —Choice In a time of national introspection regarding the country’s involvement in the persecution of Jews, Poland has begun to reimagine spaces of and for Jewishness in the Polish landscape, not as a form of nostalgia but as a way to encourage the pluralization of contemporary society. The essays in this book explore issues of the restoration, restitution, memorializing, and tourism that have brought present inhabitants into contact with initiatives to revive Jewish sites. They reveal that an emergent Jewish presence in both urban and rural landscapes exists in conflict and collaboration with other remembered minorities, engaging in complex negotiations with local, regional, national, and international groups and interests. With its emphasis on spaces and built environments, this volume illuminates the role of the material world in the complex encounter with the Jewish past in contemporary Poland. “Evokes a revolution—the word is not too strong—in the possibilities, new goals, and shifting facts on the ground associated with Jewish history and lives in Poland today.” —Canadian Jewish News

Events from a mobilities perspective attend to moments in which individual networks coalesce in place but are not isolated in their performance as they often foster far-reaching and mobile networks of community. In so doing, individuals travel from varying distances to participate in localized performances. However, events themselves are also mobile, and events affect mobility. Mobile events serve as contexts that provide meanings and purpose articulated in relation to, and as, a series of other social actions. They further highlight the role of the body and embodied practices in the performance of events. Building on Sheller and Urry’s (2004) seminal work Tourism Mobilities, the purpose of this book is to further develop event studies research within mobilities studies so as to challenge the limitations that dichotomous understandings of home/away, work/leisure, and host/guest play. Simply put, events are always already place-based and political in the sense that they can both inspire mobility as well as lead to various immobilities for different social groups. The title addresses everyday as well as extraordinary events, shining an empirical and theoretical lens onto the political, economic and social role of events in numerous geographic and cultural contexts. It stretches across academic disciplines and fields of study to illustrate the advantages of a mobilities multi-disciplinary conversation. This groundbreaking volume is the first to offer a conceptualization and theorization of event mobilities. It will serve as a valuable resource and reference for event, tourism and leisure studies students and scholars interested in exploring the ways the everyday and the extraordinary interlace.

本书详细介绍了联合国和美国、法国、日本、澳大利亚、中国的遗产体系及其生成演化的历史，目的是为了更全面地探索中国非物质文化遗产体系在世界遗产体系中的角色。

The popularization of radio, television, and the Internet radically transformed musical practice in the Asia Pacific. These technologies bequeathed media broadcasters with a profound authority over the ways we engage with musical culture. Broadcasters use this power to promote distinct cultural traditions, popularize new music, and engage diverse audiences. They also deploy mediated musics as a vehicle for disseminating ideologies, educating the masses, shaping national borders, and promoting political alliances. With original contributions by leading scholars in anthropology, ethnomusicology, sound studies, and media and cultural studies, the 12 essays this book investigate the processes of broadcasting musical culture in the Asia Pacific. We shift our gaze to the mechanisms of cultural industries in eastern Asia and the Pacific islands to understand how oft-invisible producers, musicians, and technologies facilitate, frame, reproduce, and magnify the reach of local culture.